Nine to Receive Honorary Degrees

Two women and seven men will receive honorary degrees at Harvard's 347th Commencement Exercises this morning.

In alphabetical order, the recipients are: Samuel Hutchison Beer, Doctor of Laws; Robert A. Dahl, Doctor of Laws; Gertrude B. Elion, Doctor of Science; Seamus Justin Heaney, Doctor of Letters; John Harold Johnson, Doctor of Laws; Jaroslav Pelikan, Doctor of Laws; Mary Robinson, Doctor of Laws; Henry Rosovsky, Doctor of Laws; and Jean-Pierre Serre, Doctor of Science.

Samuel Hutchison Beer

Doctor of Laws

Eaton Professor of the Science of Government Emeritus at Harvard, Samuel Beer is a distinguished scholar of British politics and American federalism. Educated at the University of Michigan, Oxford, and Harvard, where he received the Ph.D. in 1943, he taught in Harvard's Department of Government until his retirement in 1981. Over more than 30 years, his course on Western Thought and Institutions (known to many as Soc. Sci. 2) inspired thousands of students. Long active in U.S. politics, he was national chairman of Americans for Democratic Action from 1959 to 1962. A prolific writer, he is perhaps best known for his many books on Britain, including Modern British Politics (1965), for which he received the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Award. He received the Harvard University Centennial Medal in 1990.

Robert A. Dahl

Doctor of Laws

Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Yale University,

Robert Dahl is a leading theorist of democracy. He received his A.B. summa cum laude from the University of Washington in 1936 and the Ph.D. from Yale in 1940. His 40-year teaching career began in 1946 at Yale, where he served as Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science from 1955 to 1964 and as Sterling Professor from 1964 until his retirement in 1986. His pioneering work, Politics, Economics and Welfare (with C.E. Lindblom), published in 1953, has become a landmark in the field of political economy. His book, Who Governs?, won the Woodrow Wilson Award in 1962 and was described in the Times Literary Supplement in 1995 as one of "the hundred most influential books since the war." In 1990 he again received the Woodrow Wilson Award, this time for Democracy and Its Critics.

Gertrude B. Elion

Doctor of Science

A recipient of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, Gertrude Elion is scientist emerita at Glaxo Wellcome Inc. She also holds appointments as medical research professor of pharmacology and medicine at Duke University and adjunct professor of pharmacology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Educated at Hunter College and New York University, she began work with the Wellcome Research Laboratories in 1944. In 1967 she was appointed head of the Department of Experimental Therapy, a position she held until her retirement in 1983. She is credited with the synthesis and co-development of two of the first successful drugs for the treatment of leukemia, as well as of drugs used to prevent the rejection of kidney transplants and to treat gout. She also played a major role in the development of acyclovir, the first selective antiviral agent used against herpes virus infections. Elion was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1991.

Seamus Justin Heaney

Doctor of Letters

Born on a farm in County Derry, Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney has been described as the most important Irish poet since Yeats. He has published numerous books of poetry and prose, including Death of a Naturalist (1966), North (1975), The Haw Lantern (1987), and Seeing Things (1991). Professor Heaney graduated with first class honors in 1961 from Queen's University, Belfast, where he later served as lecturer in English. In 1981 he accepted an invitation to travel each spring to Harvard as Visiting Professor. He served as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard from 1984 to 1997. From 1989 to 1994 he was professor of poetry at Oxford. His numerous awards include Britain's Whitbread Award (1997) for The Spirit Level and Italy's Premio Flaiano (1995). He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."

John Harold Johnson

Doctor of Laws

Publisher, chairman, and chief executive officer of Johnson Publishing Company Inc., John Johnson has been a highly respected executive and leader of the African-American community for over 40 years. With the help of a $500 loan using his mother's furniture as collateral, he founded his publishing company in 1942 with the first issue of Negro Digest. The company now publishes three magazines, Ebony, Jet, and Ebony South Africa, and includes a book publishing division and a number of other enterprises. With more than 1.5 million subscribers, Ebony is considered the most important and widely read African-American periodical of the 20th century. Johnson is a noted philanthropist and has held numerous national service appointments. In 1996 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Jaroslav Pelikan

Doctor of Laws

Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University, Jaroslav Pelikan is a leading authority on the history of Christianity. In 1946, he received the B.D. from Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis and the Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. After spending several years teaching, first at Valparaiso University, then at Concordia, and later at the University of Chicago, he became the Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale in 1962. Ten years later, he was appointed Sterling Professor of History, a position he held until his retirement in 1996. He is the author of more than 30 books, including his five-volume series, The Christian Tradition (1971-1989), and his most recent publication, Mary Through the Centuries (1996). Professor Pelikan was named the Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1983.

Mary Robinson

Doctor of Laws

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson was born in County Mayo, Ireland, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Harvard Law School. She was appointed Reid Professor of Constitutional and Criminal Law at Trinity College in 1969, the same year she was elected to the Irish Senate. For two decades she lectured on constitutional, criminal, and European Community law while promoting human and civil rights and advocating opportunities for women. In 1990 she became president of the Republic of Ireland, the first woman so elected, and played a major role in Ireland's transformation during her seven years in office. Deeply involved in international affairs, she traveled to Somalia in 1992 to focus the world's attention on the crisis there. In 1993 she received the highest honor of the International League for Human Rights.

Henry Rosovsky

Doctor of Laws

The Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Emeritus at Harvard, Henry Rosovsky is an eminent economist with a strong interest in Japan. Born in the Free City of Danzig, he received his A.B. from the College of William and Mary and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard. After teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, Professor Rosovsky returned to Harvard in 1965 as professor of economics. From 1973 until 1984 he served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He led a review of the General Education curriculum that gave rise to the Core and set new standards for undergraduate education. In 1985, he became the first Harvard faculty member since the 19th century to serve as a member of the Harvard Corporation. Professor Rosovsky was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure (Star) by the Emperor of Japan in 1988 and received the Harvard Centennial Medal in 1997.

Jean-Pierre Serre

Doctor of Science

Professor for many years at the Collège de France, Jean-Pierre Serre is a distinguished mathematician whose work embraces an array of disciplines ranging from algebraic topology to group and number theory. In 1951, while at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, he received a doctorate in mathematics from the Sorbonne. After teaching at Université de Nancy, he became Professor at the Collège de France in 1956, later serving as chairman of the Department of Algebra and Geometry. The three volumes of Professor Serre's Collected Papers (1986) contain some of the most important developments in mathematics of this century. His presence as a regular visitor to Harvard's Department of Mathematics since the late 1950s has been an important addition to mathematical life in the University. His many honors include the Fields Medal (1954), the Balzan Prize (1985), and the Steele Prize (1995).